TURKEY

GENEVA – The Turkey Tribunal (September 20-24) today concludes its sessions against the authoritarian regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who heads a coalition between his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the ultra-nationalist National Action Party (MHP). The Turkey Tribunal is a symbolic trial against Turkey on charges…

TEL TAMR, Syria — Turkey continues to violate international law through the illegal transfer and trial of Syrian nationals who were captured by its proxy forces during and since the Turkish invasion of North and East Syria in October 2019. As a result of their continued defense of the Syriac–Assyrian…

ANKARA — The Turkish Interior Ministry is moving forward with its plans, announced last week, to demolish houses of Syrian refugees in Ankara’s Altindag District, saying that they were built without a permit and for this reason are illegal and hinder road expansion in the city. The refugees were given…

RISH AYNO, Syria — In its most recent report, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria (IICIS) of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) outlined widespread human rights violations in Turkish-occupied territories of Syria. The report relied primarily on 538 interviews conducted in…

STRASBOURG — The Council of Europe Ministers Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the decisions of European Court of Human Rights, announced that it is still waiting for Ankara to implement the Court’s decision that Democratic Peoples’ Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP) politician Selahattin Demirtaş be released…

BERLIN — The Stockholm-based investigative reporting outlet Nordic Monitor reported that the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is collecting information through espionage and intelligence operations against Turkish citizens accused of opposing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The report also stated that the Ministry has fabricated terrorism-related investigations against those perceived as…

ANKARA / MARDIN, Turkey – Independent Syriac member of Turkish parliament Tuma Çelik refuted writer Hulusi Şenel’s recent claim that the number of Syriacs living in the time of the Sayfo Genocide of 1915 was only 50,000. Çelik said in a post on Twitter that, “people lie, but a writer…

VIENNA — In response to Ankara’s increasingly combative rhetoric towards European immigration and refugee policy, Federal Minister for the EU and Constitution at the Federal Chancellery of Austria Karoline Edtstadler said that, “Turkey is using immigration and migrants as a tool to put pressure on the EU,” adding that the…

@gazetesabro – Classroom education, which had been suspended since the start of the pandemic in Turkey, resumed on September 6. Although measures are being taken against the spread of the coronavirus – classrooms and canteens are open but students are required to wear face masks at school – there is…

BSORINO / TUR ABDIN, Turkey – The village of Bsorino is one of the few remaining Syriac villages in Tur Abdin, southeastern Turkey, with a large Syriac population of 40 families. It also however, has a large diaspora in Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany who regularly visit their relatives in…